CAPE CANAVERAL - If space cargo could get frequent-flier miles, then IMAX would have its fair share.
Via shuttle Atlantis, the film company is sending another camera to the International Space Station on its fifth consecutive flight.
The newest film, Space Station, will document the construction of space station Alpha in 3-D.
It won't be released until May 2002, but an audience of KSC employees got an early preview of some raw footage Wednesday night at the KSC Visitor Complex.
"We wanted to take every man, woman and child who couldn't go to the station, who are stuck here on the ground, to the station," said Toni Myers, who produced and wrote the movie.
Wednesday night, wearing oversized yellow glasses, the audience oohed and ahhed its way through a 20-minute screening of three-dimensional IMAX footage of the station.
As an empty spacesuit glove appeared to drift toward the crowd in one scene, children reached out their hands, attempting to try on the hand gear.
In other scenes, astronauts free-floated outside the station during their spacewalks, the station crew readied for their day by shaving and taking a sponge bath, and the Proton rocket and the station's first segment roared off its launch pad in Kazakhstan.
One camera flies in the shuttle's cargo bay. On each mission, it captures eight minutes of spaceflight. Inside, the station crew has another camera. Film flies back on the shuttle for processing.
In all, producers estimate they will have shot 13 miles of film.
"We sort of measure IMAX in miles instead of feet," said James Neihouse, a Cocoa resident who helps train the astronauts to use the camera.
The astronauts have shown some ingenuity when filming, Neihouse said. For example, the station's first residents, Bill Shepherd and Sergei Krikalev, duct-taped two lights to the IMAX camera to eliminate a shadow.
"We're a really tough group to train," said former astronaut Brian Duffy, who flew to the station with an IMAX camera last fall. "It takes them a long time to do that."
Published under license from FLORIDA TODAY. Copyright © 2001 FLORIDA TODAY. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any way without the written consent of
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